Often, pallet covers are placed over a top and/or bottom sides of a load on the pallet prior to its being banned by straps or prior to it being shrink wrapped with plastic. The invention will be described in connection with an exemplary use of pallet caps which cover a stack of flat sheets of paper or printed signatures loaded onto a pallet. The pallet caps are used to protect the sheet edges along the top and bottom side edges of the stack from being torn or indented by the straps. The pallet caps also protect the edges and corners of the stacked sheets against damage when being hit or bumped during handling, storage or transporting.
The pallets and stacked material thereon often are in different sizes so that a preformed shape of pallet cover sized for a particular size of pallet stack will not usually work for substantially larger or substantially smaller sizes of stacks. By way of example, pallets carrying loads of signatures are often in multiple sizes such as 42" by 42", 43" by 48", 44" by 44" and 40" by 48". A number of proposals have been suggested to cover the top of the stack with several interleaved cap pieces that are adjustable to cover several different sizes of stacks or loads on the pallet. One such proposal is use of four interleaved, pallet caps each having a rigid, preformed, glued corner member which is secured to the top edge of a sheet of paperboard or the like. The four caps are interleaved over the top of the pallet with the rigid, formed, glued corners covering the edges of the top side of the stacked material. One problem with this proposal is that the pallet caps themselves cannot be stored flat as the right angle preformed corner sits upright and takes substantial storage space. That is, these pallet caps cannot be stored flat; and hence, they require considerable storage space. This increases storage costs. Also, the formation of the rigid, glued corners and the gluing attaching to the flat sheet adds to the cost of the pallet caps. Often, pallet caps are discarded after one or several usages; and hence, they should be inexpensive.
Often, it is desired to place the pallet caps on the stack to protect the stack while the stack is being transported by a fork lift truck to a shipping area, where the load is banded and wrapped in plastic. Thus, the pallet caps should remain in position on the load while being transported without the bands thereon to secure the pallet caps to the load.
From the foregoing, it will be seen that there is a need for a new and improved pallet cap that is inexpensive to manufacture, adjustable to various size loads, can be stored flat, and will remain on top of the load prior to being banded to the load by straps.